Friday, February 28, 2014

PlayGround-LA's March 10 Topic & Women's History Month Celebration

PlayGround-LA marks Women's History Month and continues its celebrated monthly staged reading series, Monday
Night PlayGround, on March 10 at the Zephyr Theatre with six original short
plays inspired by this month’s topic… HERSTORY:
The Greatest Stories Never Told! Los Angeles-based playwrights have until
2pm on Tuesday to write and submit scripts inspired by the topic. Playwrights
are encouraged to be creative and use the topic as a jumping-off point with all
forms of theatrical expression encouraged. For submission guidelines, visit http://playground-la.org/submit. The
six finalists will be presented as script-in-hand staged readings at 8pm on March
10. For tickets, low-cost subscriptions or for more information, the public can
call (323) 992-6766, email info@PlayGround-LA.orgor go online at http://PlayGround-LA.org.

Ten days before the
designated Monday, a topic is announced and emerging playwrights in the Greater
Los Angeles Area have until 2pm the following Tuesday to submit a short script.
A panel of judges selects six winners, whose entries are cast over the weekend
and then rehearsed with the area’s best professional actors and
directors in a whirlwind ninety minutes each before being performed as script-in-hand
staged readings. Previous topics include “Origin Story”, “Sea-Change”, “Holiday
Spirit”, “I Have A Dream...”, and last month’s “Idioms of the Heart”.

The mission of PlayGround-LA is to
support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre. PlayGround-LA
has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing the best new
writers, helping them to build a significant body of original work, and
strongly weaving these artists into the family of local theatre professionals.
PlayGround pairs early development playwrights with established, professional
actors and directors and fosters the artistic relationships that develop.

PlayGround-LA is the
first regional expansion of the celebrated Bay Area playwright incubator and
theatre community hub, PlayGround(SF). PlayGround was launched in San Francisco
in 1994 by co-founders Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama. In
1996, Kleinmann became PlayGround’s first Artistic Director. Since its
founding, PlayGround has developed and staged more than 650 original ten-minute
plays by 185 Bay Area early-career writers and has commissioned 51 full-length
plays by distinguished PlayGround alumni. In the process of staging those
works, PlayGround has helped to identify some of the leading emerging writers
and, at the same time, has engendered the creation of a true community of
theatre artists, bringing together hundreds of local actors, directors and
playwrights. For most if not all of the participating writers, PlayGround is
the first professional staging their work has received and serves as their
introduction into the professional theatre community.

PlayGround’s alumni
have gone on to win local, national and international honors for their short
and full-length work, including recognition at the Humana Festival, Sundance
Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, New York International Fringe
Festival, Aurora Theatre Company’s Global Age Project, and Samuel French
Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, among others. Directors and actors
participating in PlayGround are among some of the most distinguished theatre
professionals, regularly working on leading local stages.